Ranked: World’s Most Startup-Friendly Countries, 2024

The results are in, and the United States has been named the most startup-friendly country in the world. India comes in at 5th place, with Israel taking the 4th spot, Canada ranking 3rd, and the United Kingdom coming in 2nd. The rankings were determined by CEOWORLD magazine’s annual assessment of a country’s competitiveness and capabilities in a scientific and technical-focused economy.

The United States has maintained its position as the top-ranked country for startups due to several factors, with its research and development (R&D) capacity being key among them. The country has a high rate of startups and an active angel and venture funding industry. It’s worth noting that the U.S. is also recognized for its focus on building a knowledge-based economy. The Startup Ecosystem Ranking by Magazine evaluates 62 countries across five categories, including human capital investment, research and development, entrepreneurial infrastructure, technical workforce, and policy dynamics.

The top 10 countries in the world, in no particular order, are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Israel, India, Germany, Poland, Malaysia, Sweden, and Denmark.

World's Most Startup-Friendly Countries, 2024

General Methodology on the CEOWORLD magazine’s Most Startup Friendly Countries In The World, 2024 Rankings. The rankings are based on five major metrics of a country’s competitiveness and capabilities. The overall Score (100%) is the sum of the following:

1) Human Capital Investment: This looks at how much money is (invested) in developing and nurturing tomorrow’s workforce.

2) Research and Development: This examines a country’s research and development (R&D) capacity to see if it has the facilities that attract funding and create innovations that could be commercialized and contribute to economic growth.

3) Entrepreneurial Infrastructure – This determines the success rate of converting research into commercially viable products and services.

4) Technical Workforce – This composite measures the relative presence of high-end technical and scientific talent.

5) Policy Dynamics – This evaluates technology outcomes to assess how effective policymakers and other stakeholders have been at parlaying regional assets into regional prosperity.

Survey disclosure: How do they make their choices?

Our 194,976 respondents were sent a long list of more than 256 indicators drawn from leagues on every continent and asked one simple question: which countries are the most friendly in the world in 2024? We asked our respondents to choose five countries each and rank their selection in order from 1-10, No. 1 being their choice of the best economy in the world for 2024. The No one choice of each respondent was awarded 10pts, No two given 9pts, down to 1pt for their No ten choice. All the votes were added together to give a raw score. An economy needed to receive votes from at least 500 respondents to qualify for the list.

We are very grateful to our respondents for taking part, and none have been paid for participating in this project. To allow our respondents the freedom to express their opinions, individual voting records will be anonymized in the full breakdown of scores. The ranking relied on surveys from 194,976 people from 95 countries in the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Africa.

Of those, more than 194,976 were “informed elites” (college-educated, middle- or upper-class individuals). More than 54,000 were business leaders, defined as senior leaders in a company (with 500 or more employees). The rest belonged to the general public. The rest belonged to the general public. The survey involved respondents from 95 countries and was conducted between January 12 and March 19, 2024. The top-ranked economy receives 100 points.

The rankings result from a rigorous analytical exercise incorporating multiple data sources. Detailed survey data and information were collected directly from 194,976 individuals across 256 data points. We analyzed over 130 economies during the data collection process.

The overall score is a numerical score given to the economies based on respondents’ feedback — measuring a country’s competitiveness and capabilities in a “scientific and technical-focused” economy. Total scores are out of 100. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 194,976 respondents is plus or minus 1.3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that, as in all survey research, there are possible sources of error—such as coverage, nonresponse, and measurement error——that could affect the results. This is only one assessment, of course, even if an important one.

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